The Memoirs of the Forgotten Sacrifice
by illicit-widow
Summary: As if there wasn't enough mistaken information about the Marauders' lives. There was someone else beside them the whole time, someone the future refused to see. From the Marauders' time through the sixth book. Eventual T rating.


**A/N: **i dont own any character that you recognize. however, i must admit, for the purpose of this story, a lot of this is my own creation, including the DI (Divinity Institute). please read and review! i love my reviewers!

**Before the Beginning: Prologue**

The Memoirs of the Forgotten Sacrifice

The sun shone brightly on the modest little home at number 23, Cumberland Drive. There was something meticulous about the house, something rather mystical, that entranced the neighbors both with the home itself and to the up-and-coming little family within, the Reynolds. Keith Reynolds had grown up in this small town, and as such most of the older ladies and gentlemen remembered him from when he was 'just this high.' He was known as a good old boy, rasied by sensible parents, with a good, stable job as an accountant in the nearby city. To those in the rural town, he was familiar and down-to-earth, never pushy or showy, and certainly not hateful. He married well, they all said, to a young woman from the city, a Dawn Williamson. She was exquisitely beautiful, with fine, delicate features, high cheekbones, a dark complexion, and sharp green eyes. She had stayed at home since the birth of their first daughter, Magnolia. Maggie--as she was widely and popularly known--was an extraordinarily bright child in her mother's image, stark green eyes showing underneath tresses of brilliant red hair, the only apparent genetic link between her and her father. She was outgoing and happy, and all of the neighbors adored her. She was the recipient of all of her mother's love, and all of her father's admiration. Four years later, Dawn gave birth to another baby girl, this one named Guieneviere. She, too, inherited the flame-colored hair, and thus she was dubbed Cherry, her name being far too heavy for such a light, cheery child.

So, yes, the neighborhood was incredibly enamoured with the Reynolds and expected nothing unusual or adsurd from them, They were matter-of-fact, logical people--until this bright summer day at the beginning of July. Cumberland Drive, in itself, was quiet, tame, and docile, as it always is. But number 23 was causing a small commotion, it seemed, and this puzzled the neighbors more than what was to follow.

"Dawn! Don't start with me again!"

"Keith, you knew this was coming! Honestly! How could she be my very child and not possess such talent?"

"Talent! It's absurd! Nonsense! Lies!"

"There is no reasoning with you! When are you going to learn to admit that you're wrong?" A door slammed rather ominously throughout the house, seeming to shake it to its very foundations. Within the home, the slammed door was being beaten. "KEITH! Why don't you ever listen to me? For God's sake, she's your child, too!" Dawn sank to the ground against her bedroom door, now closed to her. She leaned her head back and cried, silent tears of degradation, abuse, and misery. She watched out of the corner of her eye as her seven-year-old daughter Maggie dashed up the stairs to her own hideaway, probably still holding the side of her face where her belligerent father had slapped her.

Maggie nearly tripped over herself as she stumbled down the hallway and threw herself upon her bed. She cried, great, heaving sobs that wracked her tiny body with grief. It wasn't the first time her dad had hit her, certainly not, and she had seen him hit her mom, too, when she wasn't supposed to be watching. But what scared her so much was that he would do it again. Maggie resolved in her heart not to do anything to make her daddy angry again.

As the sobs began to subside, and she could sufficiently wipe the tears off of her face, she noticed the wad of paper still held in a white-knuckled grip in her right hand. The deep blue envelope was there, too, its scripted writing sending the message directly to Maggie herself. It was her first real bit of mail, and oddly enough, it had come from absolutely nowhere, just slipped inside the window. Her mother had found it and jumped for sheer joy as she handed it over. The little girl was terribly confused as to how one little letter could make her mother so happy and her father so decisively angry. Funny, though, because it made her happy, too, like she hadn't been in a while. She could make out a lot of what the letter detailed, especially the part about learning magic. Magic, those wonderful tricks that her mother could do with no problem, no wand, no scepter--from cooking and cleaning to writing and creating. She admired her mother like nothing else, and she knew she wanted nothing more than to have a life like her mom's. Only, she thought, without a daddy that would hit me.

At this notion, she crumpled into tears again, stashing the letter in her nightstand drawer before crying herself to sleep on her pillow.

_Sad, huh? I was the youngest Divinity accepted at the Institute, a mere seven years old. Most Divinity are trained for a year at home under their parents, and then sent to the school at around eight, nine in cases of slower learning. But because of my father's refusal to have me taught, my mother appealed to the Minor Magic's Counsel, and I was taken in, with no particular expectations on my performance for a year. However, I shocked them all--I had watched my mother so intently for so long that I quickly mastered many spells and tricks, and advanced through my magical education with vigor. I was fifteen when I was transferred to Siberia to perform my independant study assignment, two years before my time. It was there that I met Vaughn. He was three years older than me, one year into the independant study. He wanted to be a teacher, I learned, and pass on his gift for magic to more kids like us. He was an abused kid, too, by a drunken mother that abandoned him when she found out he was of magic; apparently she was the victim of a one-night stand with a Divinity, one that had repressed his ability due to shame. We were losing ranks by then; most Divinity were ashamed because they were so rare, they believed themselves a fluke, or not really magical at all, or even hoaxes. It was a dark time to be part of such a small class of people._

_We were together for the next two years, and he graduated at the top of his Class. We spent the summer together, and that fall, he took on a teaching position at the Institute, a few thousand miles away from my temporary home in Siberia. Magic, however, made the distance endurable, and we managed to survive the next year on that, holidays, breaks, and summer. I loved him dearly, and thought for certain that I had found true happiness._

_A Divinity's final project is always to pick three targets of interest--other humans that we watch with intensive care, due to some magical anomaly in their magical 'aura,' if you will. We are to track them for the last year of our study, and to present the findings of the anomalies before the Minor Magic's Counsel, our own board of supervisors that determine matters concerning Divinities and other small, unknown types of magic. I chose targets younger than myself--by a great deal, actually, they were all about eleven. They were to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the fall, and I was going to follow them--not as a teacher, or mentor, as most magics would confine, but as a student, an eleven-year-old, to make sure that my findings were as accurate and unblemished as possible. I was taught very touchy, uncertain, old magic the last few weeks of my summer break, and I took on the appearance of an eleven-year-old just in time to meet the Hogwarts Express at King Cross Station on September first. The spell, I was told, had to be redone at least every six weeks, lest something devastating happen to me or those around._

_But that first year at a common wizard's school would change me irreparably, and I wouldn't return to the world of a Divinity for many, many years. There was something simple about the people and the way that they lived, coupled with the events of the time, that would bewitch me, for lack of a better word, for so long. I was enamoured with the normal magical life, and I refused to turn back long enough to remember where I had come from._

_Perhaps I can better explain this way..._


End file.
